Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

More wind farm news:

World's largest offshore windfarm opens off Cumbrian coast

Walney Extension will power 590,000 homes* amid fears Brexit could stifle growth

The new windfarm uses less than half the number of turbines but is more powerful.

*Quick check suggests that's based on a capacity factor of 40%, which seems reasonable, if not low compared to rising cf of UK off-shore wind as larger more efficient WT's are deployed.

Martyn1981

Energy storage rollout is increasing at an ever greater rate. Check out the graph at the end of the article for the predictions on US rollout - that's a big increase, 15 fold in 5yrs.

US Energy Storage Deployments Increase 200% Year-Over-Year

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

More wind farm news:

World's largest offshore windfarm opens off Cumbrian coast





*Quick check suggests that's based on a capacity factor of 40%, which seems reasonable, if not low compared to rising cf of UK off-shore wind as larger more efficient WT's are deployed.

Interesting that something commissioned only a couple of years ago had a strike price of £15x - I suspect the developers will be laughing all the way to the bank based on the actual build out costs with new contracts for the next few years being bid at only one third of that.

Martyn1981

michaels wrote: »

Interesting that something commissioned only a couple of years ago had a strike price of £15x - I suspect the developers will be laughing all the way to the bank based on the actual build out costs with new contracts for the next few years being bid at only one third of that.

Without the contracts that start generating today at approx £166/MWh, would we have gotten the contracts for £83/MWh and £64/MWh that will start generating around 2022-24?

Martyn1981

Nice side effect from RE.

Vast Wind And Solar Farms Would Bring More Rain to Africa

Large-scale wind and solar power 'could green the Sahara'

GreatApe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Between them, those 3 wind farms should produce around 3% of the UK's leccy. That's a lot of wind and power.

Hunterston B and Hinkley Point B due to close 2023 followed by Heysham 1 and Hartlepool in 2024 which together produce a lot more than those 3 wind farms

The hope seems to be the interconnectors being built to France might cover the lost nuclear from the UKs own nuclear 'phase out' but that might be optimistic as the Germany and Belgium phase out their own nuclear and there may not be the grid capacity to export as much as possible.

Assuming new nuclear does not happen the UK is going to be phasing out 50-60TWh of annual nuclear in the next decade and the Germans and Belgian another 120TWh so ~180TWh of nuclear will be lost in those three countries.

Wind power and especially offshore wind power needs to expand much more rapidly or the next decade is going to be replacing nuclear with wind rather than replacing fossil fuels with wind

Martyn1981

Scotland got about 68% of leccy from RE last year and another wind farm (Trump opposed) has now opened.

Offshore Wind Wins, & The Trump Organization Proves It

gefnew

Hi All


this is a different take on what we do.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bgpc2f/the-secret-life-of-landfill-a-rubbish-history
gefnew

EricMears

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Hiya. Yes, some predictions were of cooling, approx 12% of scientific papers, but approx 60% predicted global warming.

Please could you explain where those figures came from ? I assume you haven't personally read every scientific paper published during the period

Martyn1981

EricMears wrote: »

Please could you explain where those figures came from ? I assume you haven't personally read every scientific paper published during the period

Nope, not read, and wouldn't have understood them anyway.

The numbers come from analysis of the papers over a time period, I think it was something like 1960-1975, or thereabouts.

Edit - Whilst 'Google is your friend', that doesn't prevent me from trying to be too, so here's the Wikipedia entry on Global Cooling.

Global cooling

Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. At the time, some papers in the scientific literature did explore this hypothesis, but a larger number of papers were published on the topic of global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. The global cooling hypothesis nonetheless gained temporary popularity due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the debate in the scientific literature.[1] The current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but underwent global warming throughout the 20th century and continues to warm.[2]

This article from Skeptical Science has a graph showing cooling, neutral and warming papers through the years 1965-79, 1971 does stand out as a 2:1 'cooling year':

What 1970s science said about global cooling

[Note - Glad to see my memory hasn't let me down - on checking that graph's totals I get 10% for cooling, 28% for neutral and 62% for warming, so not far off my recollection of 12% & 60%. M]